Steve roadtests an MG TD

Steve took Monday & Tuesday off to travel to Philadelphia, so Wednesday morning we wasted no time getting right back to work, and around 8:45 he was out running this  MG TD over the road in order to start tuning the carburetors he extensively overhauled last week.

Let me come right out and say it; we truly pity our urban & suburban breathern.  Not only are they genuinely hard pressed to find an open road to properly dial in a car, nothing on their test routes comes anywhere close to the aesthetics of ours.  Those are round bales in Billy Acquaviva’s hayfield.  Our “B” route features sheep.  This is springtime in Vermont.

Severely worn throttle shafts

Vapor leak around jet

Steve’s first roadtest was plagued by an over-rich fuel mixture from an unusual source: Fuel was pulling up around the outside of the jet, you can actually see it if you enlarge the picture on the right.  Butch spotted the condition, and I took a picture.  This is truly an unusual situation caused by some unknown hammer-handed mechanic some time in the past.  The jet assembly aperture in the bottom of the carb body is sealed by a copper washer, however the seating was so badly mutilated that the copper washer never stood a chance.  Steve cut a new washer from fuel proof gasket paper.  Now it’s on to sorting out the distributor.

John cleans down a Borg Warner D.G. 250

Detroit Gear 250 I.D. plate

John is about to stuff the engine & automatic transmission back in the repainted & reupholstered Jaguar Mk2 sedan seen here a couple of months back.  While he spent some time cleaning up and repainting the engine ( we lateralled off the bright work to Joe at E.C.C&R. for polishing), he simply cleaned down the marvelous Studebaker Detroit Gear 250 automatic, which is the same model as the one I hauled out of the Mark IX Jaguar last week.  When Studebaker moved on to “Flight-O-Matic”, Borg Warner packed up the tooling, shipped it to England and built the D.G. 250 for Jaguar and Mercedes & some others.

Also on test:  A Jaguar on the “B” route

Capital View: Bedding-in XK 120 brake linings Sunday morning

Tight Squeeze: Jaguar Mark IX

Patrick gave me an assist last weekend and we managed to squeeze this truly massive Jaguar Mark IX sedan into what is called “The Morgan Room”, a.k.a. the north end of the shop.  Under normal conditions we can service two Morgans or two TD’s or a Midget and a Spitfire in here, or one very large sedan.   Steve’s comment was “A ship in a bottle”.

The initial purpose of the exercise was to haul out the leaky B.W. Detroit Gear Automatic for adjustment and re-sealing, a job which meets all three of our sublet criteria:  If someone else can do it better, faster, cheaper, then let ‘em.”  We have a rather lengthy punch list of other items on it, too.

Automatic Transmission in situ

Transmission out

This mechanically elegant transmission lets the driver lock the torque converter either in or out below about 60 mph.  Above 60 it’s always locked out… automatically.

Additionally, the unusual rear pump can pressurize the entire gear train, allowing for a rolling start !

A happy man & his MG TC EXU

Dick Warren collected his EXU TC Saturday afternoon after Steve did a steering box swap last week.  He reports that for the first time speed enforcement might be a problem.

The EXU (Export USA) TC’s were built specifically for the American market, and were equipped with turn signals and bumpers !   All of ‘em, were however right hand drive.  Dick’s car started out Clipper Blue, an excellent color.

And now for something completely different:  Another MG of the same vintage, but left hand drive with independent front suspension.  The first three respondents who can correctly identify what it is will receive a free oil filter of their choice, if we stock it.

Late 40's left hand drive four seater

Safety Fast: You Can Do It In An MG

Last Thursday afternoon, I road tested one of John’s scuttling kindergarten of MGB’s back to its owner in Axle River, just up the road from us.

John was following in my MGB.  The resident of the yellow house came down her driveway, let me by and pulled out in front of John, who was about 500 feet back.  I saw the whole scene in the rear view mirror:  He locked up the brakes, and took evasive action as she lurched out over the double yellow line.

The net result:  Excellent brakes and quick reflexes mean a Toyota Prius will live to see another day… Maybe.  When we went back to survey the scene we initially stopped at the wrong set of skid marks.  Perhaps it is a regular occurrance around 4520 Westminster West Road.

Butch welds a broken Triumph steering bracket

Tight Squeeze: broken bracket repaired

An interesting local stress point on a Triumph TR6 is the somewhat inadequate steering column mounting bracket fixed to the passenger compartment bulkhead.  The steering wheel is probably not a functional handgrip to raise and lower yourself to and from the driver’s seat.

After extensive excavations, John freed up enough space to allow for repair by welding, which at the very best was still a fiddle.  Butch has the best helmet and the best skills.  He made the repair.

Butch wires the Austin Mini Panel Van

Owing to an incredible 40 year run, Minis seem to have an uncanny ability to almost spontaneously mutate.  This seemingly straight forward external door hinge car is a veritable hotbed of mechanical and electrical quirks.  It’s an early car with a late A plus engine, nothing unusual really in that, but Butch has been sorely challenged trying to create a seemless cohesion out of electrical components and wiring that seem to run thru the full 40 years of model changes.  He’s winning, barely.

XK 120 brake assembly with something extra

Contrary to my strong expectations, the wheel cylinders in the XK 120 Fixed head Coupe seen here last week were in good to excellent shape, To get the most out of a drum-braked XK Jaguar it helps to have a strong right leg, and if the wheel cylinders are starting to seize, that effort goes up.

We don’t do a lot of these cars, although I have one, so when I compared the front brake linings to the rear, I thought it was unusual that they should be about 2 inches longer.  A quick consult with the factory parts book confirmed my suspicions that front & rear brake shoes are indeed the same, and should be lined up to  the round notch visible at roughly the 11:30 & 5:30 position.  In fact if you look closely, you’ll see the lining material lifting away from the shoes at either end.

"Original Brake Linings were MINTEX M.20, secured to each shoe with 12 Rivets" click to enlarge

A consultation with Jaguar XK 140 Explored by Bernard Viart, and available  confirms this.  The magnificent Viart illustration shows where the lining is supposed to be, and even tells us the original material, Mintex and the number of rivets (12).  When in doubt find a knowledgable source.

If you have an XK 140, buy the book !   If you have an XK 120 you can soon rejoice, your book’s coming out this fall. http://www.paulskilliterbooks.co.uk

Patrick dusts a few thousandths off an overdrive thrust washer

Butch, John, Steve and I have been holding down the fort during the week, and we have been very, very busy.  Patrick has been in every Saturday (and some Sundays) for more than a month putting transmissions together.

This past Saturday he finished up George Arsenault’s Healey Side Shift.  George drove down from Bridgton, Maine to supervise the final assembly.   Next up there is another 4-synchro E-type TX in his queue.

Butch bids BJ8 adieu

Wednesday it stopped raining long enough to pack the BJ8 off to Panel Palace to install the hood, grill, trunk lid & bumpers.  We’re hopeful, but not confident that we’ll see it again in six to eight weeks so that we can finish running it in and make any necessary adjustments.

That means Butch is now back on the Austin Mini Panel Van which was painstakingly rebuilt by East Coast Collision & Restoration. It’s really going to be a big moment here when it’s back on the road again in a few weeks.

Steve finishes up an MG TC steering box conversion

While John has been working  thru a log jam of MGB’s with the usual problems, Steve has finished up a steering box conversion in an MG TC.  I asked him to road test the car before he started so that he’d have a baseline for comparison, and he reported that it scared him pretty good at speeds above 30mph.

Some readers may already know our rating system for TC’s, which is the terminal velocity (usually anything above 40 mph) where you are truly in doubt of where the car is actually headed.  The rare TC will approach 50 mph with its original

an XK 120 in for brake work

steering box in excellent condition, but those cars are few and far between.  Steve’s efforts delivered a substantial reward.  After he drove it, I drove it, and it was with no small amount of surprise when, glancing at the speedometer as I found myself gaining on a black BMW, I was already well past the magical 50 mph threshold.

Like the MG TC, the Jaguar XK 120 is one of the greatest automotive shapes of all time.  It is a clean and stunningly well proportioned and functional design.  As much as I prefer the XK 140 on purely mechanical grounds, the XK 120 has it all, and that makes the XK 120 Fixed Head Coupe an even more remarkable piece of machinery, because in my judgment the shape, if anything, is even better.  Brakes, which we’ll be getting after next week, will make this Jaguar a complete package.

Another Milestone Car: On a rainy Monday the winter beater GT rolled past 100,000 miles

MGB GT rolls up 100,000 miles